???

I really don't understand computers. That is, I don't understand the personality factor.

Forget It

I wrote a nice long blog post. Now it's gone. Serves me right. Never trust a computer.

Maybe tomorrow, when I feel optimistic enough to waste time again.

Long Live the Hobbits

Tolkien's world has come to ours. Or at least, someone's discovered a wormhole.

Today's local Times Union proclaims the discovery of a human dwarf species, supposedly 18,000 years old. Their home is the Indonesian Flores Island, home to giant lizards and miniature elephants.

My personal theory? Someone's accidentally stumbled across one of the few colonies of Hobbits established during the escape from the ruin of Beleriand. No one was aware of them at the time, of course, because Hobbits are small and quiet, especially in woods full of large trees. What I don't understand yet is how they came here. If anyone has an idea, please let me know.

In other news. . .

Wednesday night was "Taste of the World", an annual Grace event sponsored by Mu Kappa and featuring tables of cultural samples from twenty-eight different countries. This is only the third or fourth year, and already it attracts hundreds of students and people from the community. Kathleen and I, both in Intermediate German, helped our Austrian professor with her table, serving Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) on bread and apple juice mixed with mineral water. We took over for our professor and her husband while they went to visit the other tables, and found ourselves scrambling to spread Nutella and fill more little cups, as well as stamp everyone's "passport" with the Austrian seal. When it was our turn, I tried nearly everything -German potato salad, sticky rice, crackers with quince jelly and cheese, authentic Russian torte. Most of the music was coming from the Argentine and Mexican tables, facing each other, where whoever was controlling the speakers seemed intent on outdoing the opposite table in volume.

When my roommate and I got back, we had to race each other up and down the entire hall to calm down.

Thank you for the package, Thainamu! I had just come out of Sociology, where we had not been discussing a pleasant topic. Finding your gift was just the right mix of kind intent and chocolate that I needed then. Yes, I definitely inherited my dad's taste for chocolate and my mom's love for it.

Photos

So I only seem to be posting once a week. What can I say? Life is busy.

I thought y'all might like to see some photos I took over fall break. These are from the day we went up to see Daddy at Mayo (Monday, 17 October).

Daddy, with his IV to the far left, and his heart monitor on upper left -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/e57b8_P1040306.JPG

Nolan and Trevor busy on Daddy's exercise bike -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/ad546_P1040309.JPG

By popular demand, Mommy -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/0c2f4_P1040320.JPG

Trevor thinking (on trip up) -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/c82fd_P1040302.JPG

And finally (okay, it's not quite straight, and I'm not quite a professional photographer. . . yet),
all the kids, more or less, in our 15-passenger van (on trip up) -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/52fe2_P1040298.JPG

I'm thinking this is the first time many people have seen Daddy for a while, since he and Mommy haven't been in our last few Christmas pictures. Anyway, this will give you an idea of our family right now. Thank you for all the prayers!

Today is one of those rainy Saturdays perfect for falling asleep over homework reading in a dorm room. Today I was glad to discover that all my midterm grades are in, all As.

Next week is Grace's Missions Conference week. For us, this means extra-long chapels on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and instead of classes Wednesday, two sessions with missionaries as speakers (8 a.m. and 11 a.m.). Wycliffe has one each hour, so that makes my choice easy.

Ardith, please have a very pleasant and relaxing Fall Break this weekend!

Having decided to avoid the sensitive topics of religion, politics, and sports, let me wish you all un bon week-end, una buena fin de semana, ein schönes Wochenende.

Here at last

Yesterday morning I woke up and typed out my German paper/speech. Then, because it was a grayish cold fall day, and I didn't have anything else to do, I went back to sleep till breakfast time. My 9 o'clock class had been cancelled, so I worked at the library till 11, when I went down to Prof. Schram's house for an authentic French meal. She served us de la salade, des baguettes, du boeuf bourgignon avec des pâtes, du fromage, and Holly made us delicious cream puffs so full of cream that it burst out at every bite.

When I got back to my dorm room, I carefully proofread and corrected my German paper. As soon as I had finished, my computer rebooted. Then I discovered that the only colors left for hall t-shirts were orange and yellow. Despite these difficulties, my paper was finished and my weekend stuff packed by 2 p.m. and German class.

We left soon after 3 and reached Tammie's house about 10:45, with a rather long, gray, and uneventful drive in between. Mommy picked me up on her way back from Mayo, and we reached home around 1 a.m. Of course, all the kids were asleep. How fun to come down this morning and see everybody!

Update

I don't know how many people actually read this blog, but I would like to ask for prayer for Daddy and Mommy. Neither of them has been online today, so I began to wonder. Kendra told me on AIM that Mommy took Daddy to the hospital on Friday because his heartbeat was irregular. While staying there overnight, his defibrillator shocked him, so they sent him up to Mayo, where he was shocked again.

I'm sure Mommy will be back within a few days to give more details. Till then, please do pray for them.


The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

James 5:16

Saturday Already

I think time perception should be reduced to an equation where the speed of time passing (y)increases exponentially as a person's age increases (x).

Last night Cheaper By The Dozen was playing in our lobby. Besides making me homesick, it reminded me to try posting links to pictures. The following link should take you to a photo I took of Trevor this summer. If it works, you will highly enjoy it because a) everyone has to love Trevor, and b) I took the picture with the superb Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1PP which Daddy found for me on Ebay.

http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/954df_P1030192.JPG

If it doesn't work, you won't know because I will have removed the link.

In other news - Midterms are next week. This doesn't mean much to me, because I only have 2 official midterms next week. I had three tests last week, two the week before, and two more next week. Our exam for Advanced French this Wednesday was the most difficult. I sat and furiously wrote long paragraphs to answer nine essay questions. After the fourth or fifth one, I could feel my brain slowing down perceptibly. After I was done, I felt mentally stretched out for the next four or five hours, and I'm sure the others had a similar experience. So on Friday, our dear kind Professor Schram took us over to the Grille to drink coffee and talk French around the table. We all agreed that we loved our French class!

Now I want to see if my photo links.

Trip to Stratford

Here's what happened this weekend. . .

Thursday night was supposed to be early-to-bed, since I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to leave on the Stratford trip at 4:30. I got back from choir practice at 9 p.m., just in time to see Kerry and Bush give their wrap-up speeches at the debate. After that, despite doing no homework, somehow I didn't get to bed till 11. Then I got up at 11:30, remembering I hadn't filled out an overnight slip. Back to bed. Here followed a pleasant 2 hours or so of sleep, till I was shocked awake by a very noisy alarm - the fire alarm. What do you know, they decided to have the drill that night. We all raced out and shivered in the cold for about 15 minutes. One more hour of sleep, then up, shower, hastily stuff my overnight gear into a backpack, run downstairs and call my friend to make sure she was up. We left from the McClain parking lot a little after 4:30, two 12-passenger vans and a 7-passenger that a student was driving.

Here and there on the trip up I almost dozed off. About 11 o'clock, we finally reached the U.S.-Canadian border. One of the girls is here in the U.S. on a student visa, and she didn't get the email about bringing her passport. Our van, the last one in the caravan, was sent to Canadian customs while the others traveled on. Customs officials (all ladies) tell us we can't enter the country. So, we try to head back across the border, only to be stopped again and sent into U.S. customs. Canadian customs was very modern, glass walls, alarms, etc. Coming into U.S. customs was like coming to Ellis Island as an immigrant about 100 years ago. They did have computers. Also big guys in blue uniforms behind the desk who barked out, "Next! Who's got an orange card?" to a crowd of non-middle-class non-white people. One lady was speaking another language. Dan (who speaks Spanish) and I (who attempt to speak French) figured out that it was Italian. We all felt very out of place.

After that, finally making cellphone contact with Professor Sauders' van, we dropped our poor passport-less friend Charity off at the house of one of the students' parents. She felt terrible that we'd already missed the first play, and wanted to make sure we made the second that evening. We felt terrible to leave her behind. Nevertheless, we persevered, reaching Stratford in time to check into the hotel and eat supper at a restaurant which was unfortunately behind, causing us to just miss the beginning of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Thus we had to watch the first two scenes on the lobby TV before we were conducted up dark stairs and hallways to our balcony seats.

The play was superb. The music and lighting together were just overpowering enough to tip me into the story. Not to mention superb acting, with just a touch of modernism that made us crack up laughing. I personally find Shakespeare anything but dry on the page, yet it's amazing how it comes to life through acting. You'd almost think Shakespeare wrote plays. Towards the end, Nick Bottom was performing before Theseus and Hippolyta, and pretending to die, with repeated shouts or groans of "Die!" and appropriate jerks and collapses, while I nearly died laughing in the top row of seats. I could see Jason, Derek, even Ethan doing it. Oh, and the Wall. The Wall was very good too.

To make a very long story short, we went out for dessert, went to bed, got up and toured the Shakespeare costume warehouse, went sightseeing and shopping (including an all-important visit to the chocolate shop), and set out on the return journey, nearly drugging ourselves with sugar when we used up our Canadian change at a gas station to buy candy bars and donuts. Crossing back into the U.S., we all held our breaths and could hardly believe no one stopped us. Except we did have to declare the bamboo - "No, it's not in dirt" - why did that guy buy bamboo anyway. We picked up Charity, who treated us to personality analyses on the way back, before it got dark and someone played the Veggie Tales DVD he had bought on a laptop (I think it was the same one who bought the bamboo). Arrived back a little after 9, good time considering all the delays.

Needless to say, we all became friends after spending hours and hours together. It was an unexpectedly wonderful weekend.

Answers

Apologies for not posting these sooner. I was extremely busy yesterday and today.

--Coercive potential -- Capacity of bombs/shells to kill/injure enemy

--Area denial weapons -- Cluster bombs that kill/destroy everything within area

--Incontinent ordnance -- Bombs/shells that miss targets and kill civilians

--Suppressing assets -- Reducing enemy's fighting ability by killing people and destroying equipment

--Ballistically induced aperture -- Bullet hole

--Scenario-dependent postcrisis environment - Whether we win or lose

Ardith did fairly well, especially on the last two. Which I think are the funny ones. Mommy wasn't as accurate, but then she was trying to apply military tactics to the homefront battle zone.

As to your prize, Ardith, it's too bad I didn't see your answers before I went to Stratford and visited all the intriguing little shops. But, since you're my sister and I love you, I'll give you something. Sometime.

Pop Quiz

Here's some military lingo from the 1991 Persian Gulf War that you can decipher over the weekend.

--Coercive potential

--Area denial weapons

--Incontinent ordnance

--Suppressing assets

--Ballistically induced aperture

--Scenario-dependent postcrisis environment


As presumptuous as these phrases sound, their translations will probably be three or four times as long. Unless you've done many writing condensation exercises.

I'll give you the answers some time after I get back.